The disclosed embodiments provide a system that facilitates the deployment and execution of a software offering. During operation, the system obtains a service definition of the software offering and a resource definition of resources available for use by the software offering. Next, the system creates a multidimensional model of the software offering by mapping a first set of elements from the service definition to a second set of elements from the resource definition. Finally, the system uses the multidimensional model to manage the deployment and execution of the software offering without requiring manual configuration of the resources by a user.